Nutrition Education

Nutrition education is a critical component of health promotion and disease prevention programs to help participants to adopt and maintain healthy eating patterns. Ideally, nutrition education should take place in a variety of venues, including, but not limited to, homes, schools, physician offices, hospitals, community settings, and media.

To change behaviors for the broadest population, effective nutrition education should be culturally appropriate, participatory, and behaviorally-focused. Given the recent surge in obesity, effective strategies for weight management are required in addition to general nutrition messages. Overweight and at-risk-for-overweight individuals should be provided with the behavioral skills necessary to consume a healthful diet and perform adequate physical activity within their environmental context

Promoting weight management behavioral change tends to be a gradual process and focuses on skill building. The Dietary Guidelines for Americans play a critical role in shaping nutrition education messages targeted toward skill-building. Common nutrition education messages targeted to obesity reduction include eating a variety of fruits and vegetables, limiting high-fat foods and energy-dense foods, controlling portion sizes, substituting water and fat-free or low-fat milk for sweetened beverages, engaging in [Page 520]moderate physical activity most days of the week, and reducing sedentary activity.

Schools

The federal child nutrition programs (National School Lunch Program, School Breakfast Program, Summer Food Service Program, and Child and Adult Care Food Program) provide nutritious foods and nutrition education, most commonly in school-based settings. Most nutrition education occurs through bulletin boards with nutrition displays or during school lunch week. However, few school meals programs offer nutrient information on food labels, give tours of their facilities, or provide nutrition input to newsletters. Only a minority of school meals programs provide classroom nutrition education.

When nutrition education is offered in the classroom, it is often integrated into core subjects to complement an emphasis on core standards. Most schools focus on increasing students' knowledge about what is meant by good nutrition, rather than influencing students' motivation, attitudes, and eating behaviors. Recently, schools have moved to promote more behaviorally focused messages and to reinforce classroom education with involvement by students' caregivers, changes in school meal programs, and food-related policies, including reducing snack bars, school stores, and vending machines.

Messages Targeted to Caregivers

In response to the surge in obesity, many schools have begun to involve caregivers in nutrition education efforts. Messages targeted to caregivers emphasize the need to promote healthful eating behaviors and regular physical activity for children outside of the school setting. Caregivers are provided with information that encourages them to actively participate in their children's behavior changes by increasing the availability and accessibility of healthy foods; limiting the availability and accessibility of sweetened beverages and high-fat, calorie-dense, nutrient-poor foods; controlling portion sizes; supporting and enabling regular family physical activity; and limiting television and recreational screen time. Although controversial, some schools have begun to provide students' body mass index (BMI) assessments to caregivers and encourage them to discuss weight issues with their children's healthcare providers.

Community

Communities consist of multiple components, including individuals, families, interest groups, faith-based groups and work sites, and government. According to the Surgeon General's Call to Action to Prevent and Decrease Overweight and Obesity, communities must play an important role to solve the obesity epidemic. Although community involvement is still a small component of nutrition education programs, communities have begun to develop obesity prevention and nutrition education programs for children and adults.

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